“Ever hear of the element of surprise, dumbass?” the woman asked as she walked past him and out of the bedroom, pulling the door closed on her way out.
The man’s gaze followed her, and then went to the children who appeared as if they were asleep. Cursing quietly, he walked over to the closet door, opened it, and slipped silently inside, sliding it shut behind him.
“I’m going to kill that bitch,” Trace muttered from beside Angel. “She is going to die slowly.”
Angel agreed, but did not say a word as she continued to watch the video play out in front of her. “Look on this screen,” one of the enforcers said, tapping the top left monitor. Angel stiffened when she saw Chase in the foyer downstairs, removing a revolver from behind his back. Since when had he started carrying? She’d never seen him with a gun before. But she had never really gotten close enough to check either. “We’d just gotten back from a mission an hour or so before that,” the enforcer continued.
“Sable,” the man next to her said shortly, “she does not have clearance for that knowledge.”
“Really, Trigger?” Sable asked haughtily as she reached out to pause the video feed. “She’s my alpha’s mate. That means she is my alpha. I don’t keep secrets from my alpha.”
“While I appreciate your attempt at maintaining the privacy of whatever mission you were on, Trigger, I have a higher clearance in many different areas of the government than you could ever think of having,” Angel broke in. “I work for the FBI, the CIA, even the president himself if he asks, which he has twice in the past. Not only that, but I’ve worked with the shifter council on several occasions.” She saw him stiffen when she mentioned the council, and knew she’d found the division he was talking about. “If you need me to contact the council, I will, but I really don’t have time for this crap. Right now, my focus is on my children and my mate.”
“Like I was saying,” Sable ground out, flipping Trigger off as she turned to look at Angel, “we had just gotten back from a mission late last night. We were out in North Carolina rescuing a bear shifter from her piece of shit brother. We brought her and her friend here, and then Chase went to the hospital to check on Rikki.”
“He did?” Angel whispered. He had gone to look in on Rikki? How often did he do that?
As if reading her mind, Sable said, “Yes. He goes to the hospital daily to see how she’s doing. When he came home, he found his alarm system was turned off.”
“And no one here noticed anything out of the ordinary?” Nico asked. “They didn’t see when the system went offline?”
“These cameras aren’t watched all of the time,” Trigger explained grudgingly as he reached over to turn the video back on. “Chase installed them when the girls came to live with him as a security measure, but we try to give them all some privacy too.”
“I can understand that, but with Chase being out of state, why wouldn’t you have someone watching them twenty-four seven until he returned?” Angel demanded. “Wouldn’t he have ordered that?”
“He did,” Sable agreed, pausing the feed again as she glared at Trigger. “Just like he does every single time we leave for a mission. However, the enforcer on duty didn’t think it was as important as our alpha did to keep an eye on them, and he fell asleep last night while everything was going on.”
“I want to talk to that enforcer,” Angel ordered darkly.
“He’s been placed in confinement,” Bran said from the open doorway. “He will be dealt with accordingly.”
“He will be dealt with by me,” Angel stated, not bothering to turn around. Nodding toward the monitor, she said, “I’m ready, Sable.” She knew she was going to get along just fine with the other woman. Sable was honest, loyal, and would stand by her alpha to the death. She’d read that much from not only their conversation, but also the brief moment she had connected to the other woman just to verify she was someone she could trust. Trigger was another story. It wasn’t that Angel didn’t think he was trustworthy and loyal, he definitely was that, but there was a darkness to him that she didn’t have time to delve into right now. It would have to wait.
The video began to play again, and Angel watched Chase make his way up the stairs on one screen, down the hall to the children’s room on another, and then she was back to the first screen as he opened the door and cautiously made his way inside. It wasn’t long before the dark haired woman showed up and then the closet door slid open. One thing was clear right away, they had been sent specifically for Angel’s children.
Chase fought like hell, killing the large bastard first and then going after the woman, Ebony. He didn’t make it to her before she shot him twice with a tranquilizer gun. Tears filled Angel’s eyes as she watched her mate crawl over to the girls. It must have taken everything in him to stand over Jade to try and protect her. The stunning blow came when Ebony whispered, “My father is going to want you.” She was the General’s daughter. Was she his biological daughter? If so, how many more children did he have out there? The thought scared the hell out of her. They had enough evil in the world already, without adding the General’s spawn to the mix.
“He fought for all of them.” Steele’s voice broke through her emotional misery. “He was ready to give his life for all three girls, including my Jade.”
“That’s because he considers her his, too.”
Angel swung around to see that Doc Josie had arrived while Angel was engrossed in the video, and was now standing next to her mate, Ryker. Her eyes were full of sympathy, as she curled her arm around Ryker’s waist and leaned into him for comfort.
“She accepted Chase as her alpha,” Angel said, looking back to see that Ebony had left the room, returning moments later with more men. It took two of them to pick up Chase’s limp body, and then they were gone, taking the most important people in her life with them.
“It is more than that, Angel,” Josie said quietly. “She’s your daughter. Because of that, Chase accepts her as his daughter, just as he accepts Jinx as his son.”
“He accepts Jinx?” Steele asked in surprise. “Has he ever met Jinx before?”
“No,” Angel whispered, the pain and agony of what she had just witnessed almost suffocating her.
“What kind of man accepts a woman’s son as his, when he has never even met him before? Jinx is a known assassin who works for the devil himself, even if he doesn’t want to. What kind of man could just accept that?” Sapphire asked in wonderment.
Angel swallowed hard, fighting back tears as she raised her head and looked at all of them. “My man.”
9
The acrid scent of fear was what hit him first. It was so strong and bitter that it turned his stomach. He tried to move, but his body wasn’t cooperating. He was numb all over, and his head felt heavy and groggy. Something was pushing him to get up and fight, but he couldn’t seem to move. The feeling of danger was surrounding him, and he wanted to howl in frustration, but all he was able to manage was moving his fingers slightly on both hands.
Suddenly he heard a soft whimper, and then, “Why isn’t he waking up, Jade? Are you sure they didn’t kill him?”
Faith! Chase struggled to open an eye as he heard Jade murmur, “He’s still alive, sweetheart, I promise.”
“Then why isn’t he moving?” another timid voice whispered. His children were in trouble. They needed him!
“He’s just sleeping, like we were,” Jade replied softly. “The bad people gave him more of the drug than they gave us, so it is making him rest longer.”
Chase gritted his teeth as he moved first one leg, and then the other. Licking his dry lips, he swallowed again and again to try and get rid of the nasty taste that coated the inside of his mouth. His head pounded, and then his heartbeat accelerated when bits and pieces of how he had ended up this way started to come back to him.
Finally managing to pry first one eye open and then the other, he cautiously took in what he could of his surroundings. He lay on a hard concrete floor, and he could see a row of
steel bars several feet away. Shifting carefully, he slowly turned his head in the direction of their voices, fury filling him when he saw his baby girls huddled together in a corner, trembling in fear. Jade held the two little ones close, trying to comfort them, but terror rolled off all three, making him want to kill anyone and everyone who had hurt them.
Closing his eyes, Chase breathed in deeply, trying to calm his emotions. His wolf wanted to make an appearance again, but he needed to think logically right now. He sensed that there was no enemy near to kill, so he needed to concentrate on figuring out a way to get them out of there…wherever they were.
Tentatively, he began to push himself up, his movements very slow and sluggish. He had no idea how he managed it, but moments later he found himself in a sitting position, held up by severely shaking arms. He heard Jade gasp his name, but he didn’t stop until he was resting with his back against the cold, hard wall. He tugged the blanket up that covered the lower half of his body, frowning when he realized he was naked. Trying to shake the fogginess from his head, he grunted as pain sliced up the back of his neck and into his skull.
“Stay still for a little while, Chase,” Jade told him calmly, although he could still smell her terror. “Let some more of the drugs wear off. You are just going to hurt yourself otherwise.”
Letting his eyes drift shut, Chase leaned his head back against the wall, a shiver running up his spine as coldness seeped even deeper into his bones. As he sat there, the night before began to play through his mind. He’d shifted into his wolf to try and protect the girls, which would explain why he had no clothes on now. He must have changed back to human sometime after they filled him with drugs. He was a shifter, so nudeness didn’t normally bother him, but he was grateful for the blanket to block out the cold, and so that his daughters didn’t get an eyeful of his junk.
Licking his lips to try and help the dryness again, he cleared his throat and asked roughly, “Do you have any idea where we are, Jade?”
At the sound of his voice, Hope let out a soft cry and pushed away from Jade to crawl quickly across the floor to him. Jumping in his lap, she wrapped her arms around his neck and began to cry. “It’s okay, honey,” he crooned, slowly lifting his hand to run it gently down her long hair. The numbness was beginning to fade, and he was starting to feel his strength return. “I’m right here.”
“I want to go home,” Hope cried. “Please, Daddy, please take us home.”
His heart clenched when the word daddy left Hope’s lips. He had taken care of the twins for over a year now, being a father figure and loving them as if they were his own, but not once had either of them called him daddy before. Holding her close, he rubbed his cheek against the top of her head. “I will, baby,” he promised, and he was going to do everything in his power to make that happen.
Chase glanced up when he saw Jade move out of the corner of his eye, and then she was beside him, leaning into him and resting her head on his shoulder. Faith snuggled into Jade, but reached out to rest a hand on his arm. “We know you will, Daddy,” she said softly.
“I don’t know where we are,” Jade whispered, “but I do know who has us.”
“So do I,” he told her, “but I don’t plan on sticking around.”
“Good.”
Chase leaned over and kissed Hope gently on the top of her head, then Faith, and lastly, Jade. They were all counting on him, and he refused to let them down. He would get them out of there, no matter what it took.
The General watched as the alpha of the White River Wolves cuddled Angel’s children close. There was no sound on the feed, but it was obvious that the man cared for them. Ebony was right, he was very protective of all three of the girls. Even Jade. Interesting. Was it because he was their alpha, or was it something more? He’d been told that Angel was the one who had adopted the girls as her own. That they just stayed at the White River Wolves compound so they would have stability in their lives because Angel was never home. He’d assumed they lived in the alpha’s house because it was the biggest one in the compound, and there was no one else to take them in.
It was definitely something more than that, he decided as the male raised his head and the General caught the love and determination shining in his gaze. Could the rumors he had heard from one of his past informants be true? Was this man Angel’s mate? He’d shrugged them off when the suspicions were brought to him because, as far as he could tell, the alpha and Angel were never near one another. It would seem that he should have delved deeper. He had almost missed a golden opportunity. Almost. The important thing was that if this man truly was Angel’s mate, then he now had everyone that meant anything to the bitch in his grasp.
The General chuckled darkly. He would find out soon enough. The next day they would all be transferred to his facility in D.C., and he had plans for the alpha.
10
Angel walked around Faith and Hope’s room, lightly touching their things as she tried to connect with them. There was nothing. Not a damn thing. Just like when she tried to slip into both Jade and Chase’s minds. And she had a feeling she knew why. The General had some kind of drug he was perfecting that blocked the line of psychic communication to anyone he held prisoner. He had used it against them in the past, and just like then, he was successful in keeping Angel out of their minds. No matter how hard she tried, there was just nothing.
Leaving the twins’ room, Angel walked down the hall to the master bedroom. She paused just outside, a part of her feeling guilty for entering Chase’s private space without an invitation. Of course, that was her own fault. He would have had her in there a long time ago if he’d gotten his way. Stiffening her shoulders, she shoved aside her apprehension and stepped inside, shutting the door behind her and effectively blocking out the rest of her team and the pack. This was her mate’s home, which meant it would be hers too if…no, not if…when she got him back. She had openly claimed him in front of everyone, and she would not back out once he was home. She would share this room with him, so that made it hers, too.
Angel stood just inside the doorway and took in the contents of the room. Three of the walls were painted a light beige color, and the fourth was accented with a dark brown. The drapes that covered the windows were brown and light blue. The large king-sized four-poster bed was made of a dark wood, and covered with a chocolate brown comforter with a beautiful light blue pattern adorning it. There was a tall dresser, and a long one with a mirror. She trailed a hand lightly down the top of the long dresser as she looked at a framed photo of her and the twins. He’d somehow gotten it without her knowing. She was sitting in a chair out back on the patio at Nico’s house, with the girls on her lap, and all three of them were laughing. She knew exactly when it was taken, as laughter for her didn’t happen often these days. They’d been grilling out, celebrating Jenna’s birthday. It was so long ago, but Angel remembered it like it was yesterday.
Biting her lip, she tore her gaze from the photo and continued to look around the room. A large picture on the far wall caught her attention, and she slowly crossed the room to get a better look at it. There was a large black wolf standing at the top of a cliff, with a stunning white wolf at his side. The black wolf held his head high, while the white one gazed down below at two small pups playing in a stream of water, looking as if they were jumping from rock to rock. Sitting off to the side of the stream was another white wolf, smaller than the one on the cliff, a powerful black wolf next to her.
Tears came to Angel’s eyes as she reached out to trace the pups, and then the other two wolves nearby. The name Phoenix was scrawled in a beautiful script in the bottom right corner of the picture. Her team always stood by her, no matter what, but it would seem that they chose to stand by her mate as well. Phoenix had painted this breathtaking picture for Chase, and she knew who the wolves in the picture were; Chase and his family, Angel, Jinx, Jade, Faith, and Hope.
One tear fell, and then another, as Angel stumbled over to sit on the edge of the bed. After everythi
ng that happened, she was finding it hard to remember why she had thought it was so important to remain apart from her mate in the first place. He had tried many times to tell her that they would only be stronger together, but she’d fought him at every turn, so sure she could protect her children better if she wasn’t tied to him, and distracted by the mating pull. What had she been thinking? Why did she refuse him? He was a good, strong, kind man. A powerful alpha who would do everything he could to protect the ones he loved, which he’d proven when he stood over Jade as that last dart hit him. Angel bowed her head, whimpering softly. Chase accepted her as she was; bold and brassy, leader of an elite mercenary team. He accepted her children, all of them, not just the two that lived with him. But she had never allowed herself to accept him.
Sobs she could no longer hold back shook her body, as long, loud howls of misery and despair escaped. The General knew just how to hit her, how to break her. He now held all of the cards. Crawling up the bed, Angel laid her head on one of the pillows and grabbed another one to hold close. Breathing Chase’s scent in deeply, she let another howl break free. He was gone, enduring who knew what, and she hadn’t even told him what he meant to her. He didn’t know that she thought about him day and night. That she touched his mind frequently, but just lightly enough to feel him briefly, and then she was gone again. There was no way he knew how often she dreamt about coming to him, claiming him, and allowing him to claim her. He had no idea how much she cared. How much she loved him. He held her heart, her soul, and he didn’t even know it.
Angel had no idea how long she lay there, crying into the pillow that smelled of her mate. Finally, all of her tears spent, she reached up and rubbed her eyes. Slowly sitting up, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and made her way to the master bathroom. After splashing cold water on her face, she grabbed a hand towel and quickly dried off. Hanging it back on the towel rack, she took a deep breath. Gripping both sides of the sink in front of her tightly, she let it out through clenched teeth. Staring into the mirror, she watched her pale blue eyes darken as the anger took over. Fuck the General. He may think he was in charge now that he had her family, but the bastard was wrong. First, she was going to find them and bring them home, and then she was going hunting. When she found the son of a bitch, she was going to take pleasure in killing him…very slowly and painfully. He didn’t realize it, but he was marked for death, and his days on this earth were severely numbered.
Angel's Destiny Page 6